


We’ll Meet Again (Some Sunny Day)

by mutemail



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Attempted robbery, Drug Use, Eventual Suicide, Guardian Angel, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Major Character Injury, Overdosing, Red String of Fate, Slice of Life, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Suicide, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, accidental suicide, guardian angel waylon, life threatening behaviour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutemail/pseuds/mutemail
Summary: Red strings of fate tie soulmates together, but what happens when your string extends towards the sky? Eddie finds through a near death experience that his soulmate does indeed exist in the form of a guardian angel. Based off a prompt from Tumblr.
Relationships: Eddie Gluskin & Waylon Park, Eddie Gluskin/Waylon Park
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Before we jump into this, I want to make it clear that the major character death tag is reserved for the last chapter. I almost didn't want to tag it but I went ahead and used two archive warnings. This is going to be a three chapter work that I post when I finish each chapter. I churned this out today and feel pretty invested in it so I'll try to have each update out within a week of the last. Anyway, take heed of the tags as they include EVERYTHING I have planned so I don't forget to update them later.

This day began like every other. His alarm jolts him awake and he stares at the glowing red numbers through bleary eyes, desperately pawing at the top of the box until it cuts off. Eddie pushes himself up onto his side before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing. A minute or two of stretching to warm up the muscles. He flicks on the light by the door then jogs down the stairs to make breakfast. Two eggs, hard-boiled, with toast coated in a thin sheet of strawberry jam and a tall glass of orange juice.

Eddie watches out the balcony window as the sun begins to rise and the world wakes up around him. He licks the corner of his lips where some jam gathered, brushing the crumbs off his plate into the trash then setting his dishes into the sink. It only takes a couple minutes to finish getting ready; his hair is properly slicked back into place and he dons his usual casual-wear meant for running errands and the like. Finally, he brushes his teeth. Wide swipes of the bristles, one-two, one-two, in little circles over and over. One-two. The flat of his tongue. He gargles water and spits then sips another mouthful. Swishes. One-two, one-two, one-two. Spit. Rinse.

The crisp of morning air hits him like a wall when he steps out of his apartment. Even the hallways seem a bit chillier than usual, though this winter has been heavier than most and it is perhaps to be expected. Again he jogs down the stairs to the ground floor, through the water-stained glass doors, and onto the sidewalk with the rest of humanity.

His gaze drags across the surging path before spotting an opening and stepping in. Eddie heads left down the street with his earbuds jammed into his ears and playing off his comforting songs playlist. He pats at his jeans for his usual carton of cigarettes, looking down in confusion when he doesn’t feel their outline, and feels someone slam into his shoulder. He looks back up and behind him as the figure walks off; a woman holding hands with her partner. The velveteen voice of Bing Crosby hums in his ears as he watches, a rock parting the river of still-moving bodies around him, and watches their hands swing together interlocked.

Couples used to fill Eddie with a bittersweet misery. There’s no guesswork. The red string bound to your left ring finger has always and will forever link to your one true love. Some people had more than one string, too, but that was considered more unheard of by society’s standards. Eddie’s string has never had an end. His string has always gone straight up to the sky and its endless blue oceans. Oceans of nothing. Oceans of questions. Oceans of questions with no answers that are met with nothing and fill his heart with a frigid coldness. Eddie would never find the end of his string and it was something he had forced himself to accept long ago in his youth. 

Eddie turns away from the women back down the street. His fingers curl around the wallet in his back pocket and he takes a turn away from the crowd to stand at a crosswalk. The gas station across the street is his target and as he stares he is already running over the day’s plans for the umpteenth time in his head.

Run by the thrift store and poke around for some casual shirts. Maybe a pair of pants or two, nothing fancy. Nothing too heavy to carry as he needs to stop for groceries on his way back. Miles has eaten the last of his rice without buying replacements so dinner plans are out the window until he can get more. Eddie worries his teeth over his chapped bottom lip with his fingers drumming anxiously at his empty front pocket. His fingers feel empty without a cigarette stuck between them.

The red flashing hand counts down. Instead of the one-two it’s a two-one and the white figure appears giving Eddie clearance to cross. He heads over briskly and enters the store before heading straight to the counter. There’s a bit of a line so he stops behind the last customer to wait. Hands jammed in his pockets, eyes wandering over the shelves, sunlight lighting up the profile of his face. He takes the earbuds out of his ears and pockets them.

Soon he is the next person in line, though before he can open his mouth there is a ruckus behind him. As he turns a masked figure comes up, boldly brandishing a gun in their right hand, and points it to the trembling cashier. Eddie instinctively takes a step back with his hands raised in a compliant gesture. The robber licks their lips with a tilt of their gun.   
  
“Money in the bag, man, you know what to do.” The figure’s eyes flick to Eddie and run up and down his figure as if sizing him up. There’s a nervous energy radiating from them that puts Eddie more on edge than the pistol in their grip. He maintains eye contact with a noncommittal expression. Out of the corner of his eye he notices another person, hooded and masked as well he assumes, raiding the snack aisles and stuffing various items into a large backpack. Bags of chips, candy bars, even a couple of noodle cups. Always one-two, one-two, one-two. The world slows around him before he is snapped back with a cold jab to the chest.

“Hey, eyes on me!” The robber’s hand is shaking slightly and their voice sounds as if it is on the cusp of wavering. Eddie fixes his eyes back on them. Their wild eyes. The way their mask is just slightly askew as if it has been placed without much thought. Eddie feels them shove the barrel of the gun into his chest again and he takes a step backwards. “Don’t look at them, look at me.”

Behind the counter the clerk watches them both with her hands paused above the open drawer of the register. She looks to the robber, then to Eddie, and once again back, sneaking her hands under the counter to find the emergency button w her fingers. It goes down without an audible click but before she can remove her hands the robber turns back in a panic.

“What did you just do you bitch?” They scream, gun waving wildly as they begin to spiral. The cashier quickly brings her hands back up beside her head, stammering out half-apologies before backtracking over them and starting more, wincing as the gun slams into the thick glass between her and the patrons. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh-- fuck! Fuck! Why would you do that?”   
  
One-two, one-two, one-two. Eddie’s eyes flutter a bit. Overwhelming. He does a half step in between the robber and the glass, mouth opening to speak, when a loud ringing starts off between them. Eddie feels vibrations travelling though his upper chest and he paws at it in confusion. The tips of his fingers come back red. He looks down at himself properly and watches as a dark burgundy stain begins to spread through the layer of his grey shirt.

The world around him slows considerably. He finds himself faintly aware that the robbers have fled in a panic and there is a siren gradually making its way towards the gas station. All he can manage is to press his hand over the wound and walk himself outside in a daze. Darkness surrounds the edges of his vision.

An ambulance pulls into the parking lot right as Eddie drops backwards, eyes rolling back. Guess he won’t be getting that pack of cigarettes after all.  
  


\-- ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ --  
  


When Eddie opens his eyes it’s to some place otherworldly. He’s reclined on his back on a silver table among the clouds. He sits up, brows furrowing, to look around. Clouds echo about endlessly and light seems to come from everywhere but nowhere all at once. Suddenly there is a noise from in front of him and he turns, sizing up the new figure.

“Eddie, it isn’t your time,” even her voice is as gentle as her physique. Her hair tumbles in short, wavy curls around her ears-- nono, his hair. His ears. Eddie’s vision clears and spots a distinct line of hair around the curve of his jaw, a sight so endearingly familiar. Every romance movie cliche begins to make sense. Is this what love is? Is this the feeling everyone chases after? If he cared to notice, he would see his red string melting away into his chest.

They lock eyes and warmth fills Eddie’s heart. It’s as though the stars have aligned, the sun is shining down on him in a blessing, everything in the world has hit pause for this very moment to occur. Eddie blinks once, twice, one-two. The vision doesn’t waver. Golden light pours from the angel’s halo in beautiful, endless streams. The ice encasing Eddie’s heart shatters under the pressure of its insistent thumping. His blood is a thunderous roar in his ears and a dopey smile curves on his lips. A sense of peace has befallen him.

“You’ll be waking up soon. You must try to take care of yourself.”

An angel. Eddie forces himself to try and pay attention to what’s being said but finds it terribly difficult. Every part of him is yearning, gazing upon him with fondness, an unrivaled feeling of possessiveness and admiration welling in his heart. Then the dream begins to fade, the clouds darkening, light ebbing away as the angel smiles at him.

“Wait-- wait, no. I want to stay here.” Eddie reaches out and clasps the angel’s hands in his own, brows furrowed together in painful confusion. He can faintly see the red string as a barely-there line from his chest to the angel above him. “You’re-- you’re the person I’ve been waiting for. All my life I thought you didn’t exist and now you’re here and--.”

His voice is thick with emotion.

“I never want to leave your side again.”

The angel’s face softens a bit and he looks away shyly before refocusing his eyes on Eddie. He comes over and gently presses on Eddie’s shoulders until he’s laying back on the table like before. Can he ever go back to before knowing what awaits him?

“I know, Eddie,” the angel brushes his fingers over the shell of the man’s ear with a tender expression. “But it isn’t your time. This wasn’t supposed to happen, I’m sorry, but that’s reality. You have to keep living and we can be together after.”

“I want it now.” Eddie hears the faint sound of beeping, rustling, a one-two one-two beat that grows louder in his ears.

**Mr. Gluskin..?**

A voice calls from the void, endless. Eddie looks directly above him to the endless sky, an ocean of answers, all of them being the angel at his side. The clouds fade even darker. He desperately turns back to the angel only to find the space empty. His heart seizes painfully before everything goes black. Comfortingly black.

**Give him time, the anesthetic is just beginning to wear off.  
  
**

\-- ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ --   
  


Eddie finds himself once again waking in a strange place.

“You’re lucky to be alive, really. The bullet was a millimeter from nicking your aorta and there wouldn’t have been time to save you.” The doctor flips a couple pages on his clipboard with a hum and tilt of his head. “Though it looks like you’re recovering well and can discharge tomorrow or the next day. We just would like to monitor you for a bit in case there are any complications.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

Eddie didn’t feel very lucky. He felt very much as if his chance at happiness had been torn from him prematurely. In all his twenty-six years he had never felt such childlike glee, he had never looked at someone and felt so wholly accepted, and he knows he’ll never feel it again without being at the angel’s side. He draws his hand up over the bandages on his chest and imagines what would have happened if that bullet had been a millimeter closer.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie tries to see his angel again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back everyone! I didn't quite keep to my plan of weekly updates but here we go anyway. Remember to HEED THE TAGS & as always, please enjoy.

As soon as his foot hits the concrete outside the front of the hospital he’s thinking of how to see his angel again. Miles had insisted that he be the one to drive Eddie home rather than allowing him to take public transport which, in hindsight, was incredibly kind of him to do so, and despite Eddie’s constant refusal he parked his dirty Jeep Wrangler in the patient discharge area. Miles aids him up into the passenger seat and drives back off to the apartment, making eager conversation all the while. Eddie remains silent.

Once he’s back in the apartment he heads directly into his room, making an excuse that he feels weak from all the excitement of leaving the hospital, and says he needs to lay down. In actuality he’s having difficulty coming to terms with reality again. There’s no one in this world that could possibly be going through what Eddie is going through at this moment. If he even mentioned it they’d call him crazy. It’s impossible. Unfathomable. _Simply a trick of the mind_ , a would-be-life flashing before his eyes. The final comfort.

Eddie clenches his jaw. That can’t be it, it felt so real. Every emotion inside him is screaming for an explanation. How could he even begin to explain the hole in his chest that his angel filled? A guardian angel. The irony isn’t lost on him. So long he had led a life of misery when the answer was one fatal gunshot away.

He can hear Miles scrounging around in the kitchen. A few pots clang together and then the sound of water rushing from the sink. Eddie forces his eyes shut with the sound of the fan overhead lulling him into a fitful sleep.

\-- ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ --

It’s days later when Eddie finds himself holding the bottle of painkillers his surgeon prescribed. Getting Miles to take his eyes off Eddie for long enough for him to try and see the angel again proved difficult at first, but as time inches forward and Eddie appears to return to normal, so does Miles’ anxieties. Eddie presses the cap down with the flat of his hand before twisting to undo the child-safe lock on the bottle.

This certainly hadn’t been the first idea to come to mind, no-- he’d tried a variety of less dangerous options. Holding onto the balcony with only one hand? Nothing. Forcing himself underwater for long periods, vomiting the water and gasping with each failure? Not even a hint of light in the darkness. Nothing holding him in its warm embrace and telling him that everything will be okay.

A whole lot of nothing at all.

Nothing should be comforting, shouldn’t it. Nothing to worry about and nothing to stress over. Nothing but the present. What is currently happening. It isn’t comforting in any sense of the word. To Eddie, nothing is the _norm_ it’s a mundane cycle. It’s simply incomplete. Without that blonde angel his life has no real meaning. It’s nothing. It has always been nothing.

He tips back his chin with two pills in the palm of his hand. Eddie swallows them dry then looks at himself in the mirror. Who is that staring back at him? A shell. A husk. A part of him was left behind in the clouds and he needs to find it again before he falls apart completely without a glue to hold him together.

Eddie twists the lid back shut and returns the bottle to the cabinet behind the mirror. His attention turns to the pack of industrial razors still in the package sitting on the edge of the sink. He picks at the edge of the plastic to peel it away from the cardboard, plucking out a singular blade. Eddie keeps his eyes on its reflective surface as he seats himself in the bottom of the tub with his back resting in the curve of the porcelain.

The first time Eddie had seen him, it’d been after nearly bleeding out from a gunshot to the chest. Maybe if he can get close, cut just barely deep enough, he can see the light again. He flips the razor between his fingers nervously. One-two, one-two. Eddie takes a deep breath to steady himself before allowing the edge of the razor to bite into the delicate skin of his wrist.

He saws the razor against the inside of his wrist despite the nausea bubbling up his throat. Eddie screws his eyes shut, moves up a fraction of an inch, repeats the motions, moves up again, repeats. Moves, repeats, moves, repeats. One-two. Press, dig the tip in, saw it back and forth, don’t look at it. Don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look one-two one-two one-two, one-two, one-two.

The warm gush of blood with each cut makes the dizziness pound harder in his skull. By now half of his forearm is covered in deep cuts so he stops, shakily tossing his razor somewhere on the bathroom floor and relaxing himself back into the porcelain tub. Eddie gives a shuddering exhale, crossing both his arms over his stomach in an effort to get comfortable. As comfortable as one can expect to be bleeding out in a tub.

His gaze remains locked on the ceiling as this uncomfortable feeling assaults his body. He can feel the blood soaking into his shirt but he tries dutifully to ignore it. Instead, he tries to remember the bliss of seeing his angel, the warmth raining down on his face and the happiness that wells up in his chest when he’s up in the clouds. Eddie watches the ceiling disappear from view, replaced by a comforting darkness.

The world around him fades. His body is suspended midair, complete silence surrounding him. He blinks. A supernova of clouds, reds and yellows and muted oranges, expanding from one point in the distance. Suddenly he’s aware that he’s no longer floating, there’s a firmness beneath his feet. Eddie takes a tentative step forward.

**Eddie?**

The voice surrounds him like a warm blanket. He takes a step forward and, seeing that he doesn’t fall off the edge into nothingness, takes another. Eddie walks towards the clouds with an eager expression and hope surging in his chest.

**Eddie, you haven’t been taking care of yourself like I asked.**

A sniff comes from behind him. He turns on the spot and comes face to face with the angel from before. This time he can dedicate himself to memorizing every detail. The robes he wears are a glorious cream and descend from two thick shoulder straps down to the angel’s ankle, his feet bare. When Eddie returns his attention to the angel’s face he finds red-rimmed eyes and a trembling chin.

“Oh, darling,” he steps forward to place a hand on the other’s chin. “I’ve just missed you so much. I couldn’t help myself.”

The angel drops his eyes, shifting closer. For a few moments they simply stand together in each other’s company.

“You can’t do these things to yourself. I worry, you know. It’s not your time yet. You can’t just--,” his voice is thick with emotion. “Can’t put yourself in harm’s way to see me. I won’t allow it.”

Eddie bends his knees just slightly, cupping the angel’s face in both hands. He leans in and presses a kiss to the crease of his brow.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t help myself. I had to see you again. You’re all I think about and I don’t even know your name. You’re the first thought I have in the morning and in every dream at night. I’ve never felt as happy as I have when I’m with you.”

Another bout of silence falls between them. It’s comfortable.

“Waylon.” The angel speaks up.

“Hm?”

“My name is Waylon.” The blond tilts up his head and bumps his nose against Eddie’s chin. He presses his lips there for just a moment.

“Waylon.” Eddie rolls the name around on his tongue, feeling a surge of _something_ in his chest. Unbridled affection. Adoration. Love. Waylon watches him and Eddie finds himself lost in those beautiful blue eyes. He thinks of the ocean, the smugness of its mystery transformed into a wholesome blossom of feeling in his chest.

“I have to send you back now.” Waylon grips his hand firmly with sudden seriousness. “Please don’t do that again, wait your time. My heart aches for you.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth the colors begin to fade. The clouds retract into the distance and the firmness beneath his feet dissolve, leaving Eddie clinging to Waylon’s arms as he is pulled back towards reality. A frantic feeling overtakes him. He tries to pull himself closer to the angel only to feel something dragging him away.

“Nonono-- Waylon, please. Don’t make me go back! Don’t make me!” Eddie watches the vision before him fade away into nothing, the darkness around him turning all encompassing, and then complete silence befalls him.

\-- ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ --

Eddie wakes up hours later in his apartment. The cuts on his arm have stopped bleeding, having made a mess in the progress, and there’s a resounding emptiness that leaves him feeling defeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter after this!
> 
> Wanting to join an 18+ Outlast Waylon/Eddie themed server?  
> Click [here](https://deathgardens.tumblr.com/post/190729973021/outlast-discord-server-18) for the details!
> 
> Kudos & comments fuel my writing!

**Author's Note:**

> Wanting to join an 18+ Outlast Waylon/Eddie themed server?  
> Click [here](https://deathgardens.tumblr.com/post/190729973021/outlast-discord-server-18) for the details!
> 
> Kudos & comments fuel my writing!


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